If your renting and paying $1000 for a one bedroom in Chicago you're crazy.....My rent is 685......new everything hardwood floors free heat everything........before I pay over $800 Ill buy a house.....

Where? What neighborhoods? The only place I saw those prices were south side.

Yep out south.....which contrary to popular belief isn't all bad.......

No I know its not all bad. I actually got a lot of good advice about which areas were ok and which weren't. I was actually about to rent a condo in south shore, had applied and everything when the owner decided to keep trying to sell it.

I just knew that I wanted relatively quick access to the loop both driving and by train to give myself some options. Public transit from south side is tricky. And I'm new to the city so wasn't tryna gamble then be pissed off and bound by a one year lease.

If your renting and paying $1000 for a one bedroom in Chicago you're crazy.....My rent is 685......new everything hardwood floors free heat everything........before I pay over $800 Ill buy a house.....

Where? What neighborhoods? The only place I saw those prices were south side.

Yep out south.....which contrary to popular belief isn't all bad.......

No I know its not all bad. I actually got a lot of good advice about which areas were ok and which weren't. I was actually about to rent a condo in south shore, had applied and everything when the owner decided to keep trying to sell it.

I just knew that I wanted relatively quick access to the loop both driving and by train to give myself some options. Public transit from south side is tricky. And I'm new to the city so wasn't tryna gamble then be pissed off and bound by a one year lease.

There are some cheap places throughout Texas also just not the area I live. There are some places I could get a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom townhouse for $780

Ya should have said this with my first post. There are plenty of affordable places in Houston, but not near my area. Houston is a big ass city so you'll find any type of condo or apartment or housing that you need. Just depends on the area.

The share of renters who pay more than 30 percent of what they make
on housing, or what the study labels “cost-burdened,” rose 12 percentage
points last decade, reaching 50 percent in 2010. That includes 27
percent who face a “severe burden,” or in other words, pay more than
half of their income on rent, a figure that rose 8 percentage points.
Initial estimates show that there were a record 21.1 million renters who
were cost-burdened in 2012.

The most recent data is for 2011, however, when 20.6 million people
were cost-burdened and 11.3 million paid more than half what they made
for housing. This problem falls heavily on low-income renters. More than
80 percent of those who made less than $15,000 in 2011 paid 30 percent
of their income or more on housing, with 71 percent paying at least
half. Given their tight budgets, these renters spend about $130 less on
food, “a reduction of nearly 40 percent relative to those without
[housing] burdens,” the authors write. “Housing affordability is thus
clearly linked to the problem of hunger in America.” They also spend
significantly less on health care and retirement savings.

It’s not too hard to figure out why so many struggle to afford rent.
There is very little affordable housing available. These low-income
renters who make $15,000 or less would have to find housing that costs
less than $375 a month, yet the median monthly cost for housing that was
built in the last four years is more than $1,000. Less than a third of
those units rents for under $800, and a mere 5 percent go for less than
$400. There were just 6.9 million housing units that these renters could
afford in 2011, but there are 11.8 of these renters, and to top it off,
2.6 million of the affordable units are occupied by higher-income
people. The availability of low-cost housing has been declining for decades
— in 1970, there was an actual surplus of 300,000 low-cost rental
units, but by 2011, there was a shortfall of 5.3 million units.

Unemployment also exacerbated the situation, although the report
notes that “high unemployment rates are not the main culprit because the
spread of burdens has been even greater among households with full-time
workers.” Three-quarters of renters whose household heads couldn’t find
a job in the previous year had a housing cost burden. But the share of
those who were burdened while also working throughout the year before
rose nearly 10 percentage points from 2001 to 2011, reaching more than
2.5 million people.

Meanwhile, federal subsidies to help low-income people afford housing
have been hammered by budget cuts and are far from reaching everyone
who needs help. One quarter
of the households who are eligible for rental assistance actually gets
it given the high demand that puts many on lengthy waiting lists. That
problem got even worse this year thanks to sequestration, as some people
who had finally moved off the waiting lists got their vouchers snatched back
because of the automatic budget cuts. Between 40,000 and 65,000 fewer
people will have gotten assistance this year compared to last, and if
the cuts remain in place next year somewhere between 125,000 and 185,000 additional people will lose the support. Yet housing subsidies kept 2.8 million people out of poverty last year.

The inability of so many to afford rent has pushed many into homelessness. Almost half
of the country’s homeless population works but doesn’t make enough to
pay for housing. While there has been a decline in the numbers
nationally, on any given night there are more than 600,000 homeless people,
according to government data, and some of the most populous states
actually saw big increases. The number of homeless students reached a record last year at 1.1 million.

Yet sequestration is also hurting the services that help the homeless.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more
than 100,000 homeless and formerly homeless people would be removed from
programs thanks to the cuts. Instead of pulling back on all of this
investment, a way to fight homelessness would be for Congress to support the creation of more affordable housing by providing financing through the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

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